10 States That Produce the Most Renewable Energy

[NNadir]

14. I really, really, really don't care about what some people call "nuclear waste."

Last edited Fri Jul 29, 2022, 09:10 AM - Edit history (1)

I'm far more concerned with dangerous fossil fuel waste, again, in case you missed it, air pollution and now, climate change.

I hear endlessly about so called "nuclear waste," but what I don't hear is any account of the accumulation of used nuclear fuels over more than 70 years killing as many people as will die in the next 70 minutes from air pollution.

I am familiar with every single fission product and every actinide in the periodic table. I've spent 30 years learning about it, again in the primary scientific literature.

I've written many, many, many articles here about the constituents of nuclear fuel, all of which I consider to be extremely valuable materials that can do what no other materials can do. High energy radiation breaks strong chemical bonds. Most persistent chemical pollutants feature just such bonds.

Here's just one example of what I've written about the utility of components of used nuclear fuel, one that is not employed because of irrational fetishes about the risks of radiation: Nice Mechanistic Graphic on the Mechanism of Mineralization of PFAS by Irradiation.

So please spare me a lecture on so called "nuclear waste." The difference between so called "nuclear waste" and dangerous fossil fuel waste is that fossil fuel waste kills people on a vast scale, and is, in fact, killing the entire planet, wiping out precious ecosystems and so called "nuclear waste," um, isn't.

Now, again, in case it escaped you, I have not claimed that nuclear energy is risk free. It doesn't have to be risk free to be vastly superior to everything else; it only has to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is. I include in "superior to everything else," tearing the shit out virgin wilderness and lacing it with access roads for huge diesel trucks to make industrial parks for wind turbines.

You want me to comment on Chernobyl? OK. I will. Chernobyl was a wake up call for me because it opened my mind to question obscene and frankly dishonest rhetoric. I changed my mind from being a dumb rote anti-nuke because of Chernobyl, not in spite of it. The reason is that I was trained by buying into bullshit by people whose credibility I stupidly accepted that Chernobyl would lead to vast deaths across Europe, millions of people. The reality is very different. Chernobyl is the worst case possible. A flammable core burned for weeks releasing the bulk of the radioactive components. There were deaths of course, but on what scale? Given 18,000 deaths to 19,000 deaths per day from air pollution, how many days of air pollution deaths have been caused by Chernobyl radiation releases over 36 years?

Kiev is still there, although it's being attacked by Russians whose weapons were financed by Germany because Germany made the disastrous, deadly decision to shut its nuclear plants in an appeal to fear and ignorance.

Which killed more Ukrainians, dangerous fossil fuels diverted to weapons of mass destruction or Chernobyl?

I don't credit selective attention. Chernobyl occurred in April of 1986, 36 years ago. In that 36 years, I'm certain that more people have died from air pollution generated by burning coal to power computers to whine about Chernobyl than were killed by the radiation released by the reactor.

I'm not joking. I'm deadly serious. Fossil fuels kill people whenever they operate normally. The rates at which they kill were also reported in Lancet, again, one of the world's most prestigious scientific medical journals.

Anil Markandya, Paul Wilkinson, Electricity generation and health, The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9591, 2007, Pages 979-990.

Here's table 2: .

Literally tens of thousands of scientific papers have been written about Chernobyl. I've personally read at least a thousand myself, probably much more; I've lost count.

The Germans worked themselves up to a frenzy of extreme ignorance, destroying valuable infrastructure that worked to save humanity, because of idiotic interpretations of Chernobyl

The Germans are burning coal right now because they shut their nuclear plants to finance Putin. It's a decision that is effectively murder based on the data just produced.

On Tuesday, my son, of whom I'm very proud, a highly trained materials science engineer begins a Ph.D. program in nuclear engineering.

He knows, as I know, that selective attention is obscene in the extreme. The numbers from my previous post indicate about 6 to 7 million air pollution deaths per year. There are more recent assessments that argue the figure is higher.

I discussed on such claim here: A different figure for world wide air pollution deaths than the one I generally use.

This recent paper claimed 8.7 million air pollution deaths per year.

But let's use the Lancet numbers, between 6 and 7 million deaths. In the 36 years that people have been carrying on endlessly about Chernobyl, the death toll from air pollution, between 220,000,000 million and 250,000,000 people died from air pollution.

And yet, and yet, and yet I am still asked to discuss Chernobyl.

I'm sorry. I can't take that seriously.

Nuclear energy saves lives. So called "renewable energy," with it's very very low energy to mass ratio, is based on mining the shit out of the planet and building multiple systems that add up to extreme unreliability. Depending on the weather for all of our energy at the same time we have destabilized the weather is, frankly, insane. We've made a world in which people will die of their air conditioners lose power, or if they can't afford air conditioning, a very dangerous feedback loop.

The claim that so called "renewable energy" is sustainable is nonsense and it's reactionary. It's reactionary because humanity lived at the pleasure of the weather for eons and abandoned it for a reason. It proved to be something of a Faustian bargain, since the move to high energy density materials, coal, oil, and gas is not sustainable, but they did so because depending on the weather was not sustainable. Most people then, even more so than today, lived short, miserable lives of dire poverty.

I believe it's just at the edge of feasibility that some of what is left for future generations might yet be saved using the discovery in the 20th century made by some of the finest minds the world has ever seen, and even that some of what has been lost might be restored.

You want to know what I think we should do? How about thinking differently? How about recognizing that everything we're doing is not working? How about confessing ignorance? I did after Chernobyl.

People get angry at me for telling the truth as I see it but I'm morally compelled to refuse to lie to make people feel all warm and fuzzy by nodding my head in agreement with the unacceptable and the immoral. A vast tragedy is underway. Because of this, we should challenge ourselves; challenge our assumptions, in particular lazy rote assumptions.

Few people have the privilege of access to the scientific literature that I have enjoyed for 30 years; I do understand that, but I didn't have that access in 1986, but still I opened my mind and questioned myself. I sought, urgently, to learn more, and I've spent all the years since doing so, often at personal sacrifice.

Anyone who cares can do that. On the other hand, if one doesn't care, one can - and many people here do - mouth slogans.

I have no use, none, zero, zilch, nada, for slogans containing the words "Chernobyl," "Fukushima," or "Three Mile Island." On the scale of the vast and unyielding and constant face of climate change, those three events are trivial in the extreme. Likewise, I have no use for evocations of so called "nuclear waste." I have told my son as he embarks on a nuclear engineering career - one he's chosen that honors me - that used nuclear fuel, particularly the actinides therein, are the key to saving what still can be saved and restoring what can be restored. It's not "waste." It's a valuable treasure an essential tool to which we are privileged to have access.

Have a nice day tomorrow.